Crazy: 90 Percent of People Don't Know How to Use CTRL+F - The Atlantic

Crazy: 90 Percent of People Don't Know How to Use CTRL+F - The Atlantic

Google SketchUp - Competitions

Something to keep the kids busy? Google SketchUp - Competitions:

'via Blog this'

BBC News - Valve's online game service Steam hit by hackers

With Valves Steam being hit by hackers - it might be an idea to change your Steam password? BBC News - Valve's online game service Steam hit by hackers:

'via Blog this'

Win32k TrueType font parsing and Duqu fixit

Microsoft have released a temporary fix to overcome the vulnerability that is distributing Duqu.
It works by denying access to the Win32k TrueType font parsing engine. The fix doesn't appear to be on Windows update yet, you have to enable\disable it from here.

Open Source Procurement Toolkit | Cabinet Office

This toolkit supports this statement: 'The Government ICT Strategy states that “Where appropriate, Government will procure open source solutions.”' Open Source Procurement Toolkit | Cabinet Office

Ok, Google+ is now available for Apps users. Let's see what this is about?

Ok, Google+ is now available for Apps users. Let's see what this is about?

iPad2 Magnet unlock bug to be fixed in IOS v5.0.1

Looks like the "Magnet unlock" bug will be fixed with the upcoming IOS v5.0.1. It doesn't allow the screen to be unlocked whilst on the power screen.

For the moment, you either have to disable the unlock feature, or educate the users not to leave apps in the foreground.

http://9to5mac.com/2011/11/02/apple-fixes-ipad-2-smart-cover-passcode-security-flaw-with-ios-5-0-1/

UK Government seeking bidders for 'G' cloud

Interesting article at The Register. The UK Govenment is seeking bidders to provide a cloud for us by public bodies. reg.cx/1Rpg

Ellie Goulding - Lights - WebGL/HTML5 Demo

Ellie Goulding - Lights:

Nice song, and nice psychedelic graphics!
You'll need Chrome or another WebGL enabled browser (are there any?) to view this.

'via Blog this'

divide.com

This allows you to separate Work and Personal stuff on the same device. Shortly to be released on Android, it is currently available in beta. Looks like it will also be released for IOS devices. http://divide.com - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Remote control for Chrome

Now, users of the Chrome browser can remote control any other computer running Chrome using this extension. Chromebooks don't support sharing yet but I've found the video response to be good and video scaling works well even if there is no support for sound.

Give it a go by downloading the extension for Chrome:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gbchcmhmhahfdphkhkmpfmihenigjmpp?hl=en-GB&hc=search&hcp=main

Unable to launch Citrix applications from Desktop

I had a problem launching short-cuts to applications delivered by Citrix to my Windows 7 desktop. Double-clicking an application showed a message saying that the program had been downloaded from the internet, and did I want to open it.

Problem was, it hadn't! It was a shortcut to the Citrix PNAgent to run a Citrix delivered application.
After trying a few things such as a group policy edit to classify .lnk files as moderately safe (didn't work), or changing IE9 to allow executables to run from the Internet Zone rather than prompting (worked but generated Internet Explorer security warnings) I hit on a similar issue.

I ran the following command to remove the warning:
icacls "C:\Users\Username\Desktop" /Setintegritylevel (OI)(CI)M

Minecraft - Pocket Edition - Android Market

Minecraft - Pocket Edition - Android Market: 'via Blog this'

I think you'll like this Tom?

Virtio balloon | Richard WM Jones

Virtio balloon | Richard WM Jones: 'via Blog this'

A nice explanation about Linux Virtio memory ballooning.

Want to see inside Microsoft’s global datacentres? - UK TechNet - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

Want to see inside Microsoft’s global datacentres? - UK TechNet - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

Ask Slashdot: What Will IT Look Like In 10 Years? - Slashdot

Ask Slashdot: What Will IT Look Like In 10 Years? - Slashdot

DK: 25,000 hospital staff Copenhagen region to use open source office suite —

DK: 25,000 hospital staff Copenhagen region to use open source office suite —

Chromebook screen corruption

I'm running the latest dev build on my Chromebook (14.0.835.98) and seem to have an occasional screen corruption issue.

I have reported it as a bug, but due to a known issue with this build, I was unable to attach a screenshot.

Google Plus for Google Apps in the coming months - wellsb.com

Google Plus for Google Apps in the coming months - wellsb.com

It's getting a little annoying not being able to use Google+.

According to this post (made at the end of June), it should be available in the next few months.

That should hopefully be by the end of August then?

Chromebook

I'm really interested in buying one of these to replace my Macbook Air, which I currently use to email and browse the web at home. I don't take my Macbook mobile because of it's dreadful heat issues, so I use an iPad for that. I think the Chromebook could replace both of these quite happily.

Problem is, I want to see one in the flesh before I commit to buy.

Amazon and PC World have them for mail order, but I just need to see one first!

VMware KB: VMware Data Recovery Integrity Check fails with the error: Trouble reading from destination volume, error -2241

VMware KB: VMware Data Recovery Integrity Check fails with the error: Trouble reading from destination volume, error -2241

Store contains either a STORE.LCK folder or you have corrupted backups.

You need to either remove the STORE.LCK folder or mark the corrupted backups for deletion.

Then run a manual integrity check.

I think this happens because of a power outage or storage server shutdown.

VMware KB: Running a manual integrity check on a VMware Data Recovery deduplication store

VMware KB: Running a manual integrity check on a VMware Data Recovery deduplication store

NHS Trusts in the dark over CfH licence transfer

How very, very, true...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/17/nhs_trusts_/

Virgin Media - Faster upload speeds

Virgin Media are rolling out upload speeds of 10% of your broadband download speed.
Ipswich (including Felixstowe) are due to get it next month.

More info here:
http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/discover-broadband/broadband-speed/upload-speeds.html?buspart=DD_31

Looks like we're due to get 100Mb downloads in September :)
http://shop.virginmedia.com/content/dam/allyours/pdf/100Mb%20rollout%2003%2006%2011.pdf

Disk and File Recovery Tools

I've used R-Studio in the past (Commercial):
http://www.r-studio.com/

But recently, I've been using TestDisk (Open Source):

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

The best bootable USB\CD version I've found is SystemRescueCD (Open Source):

http://www.sysresccd.org

There are plenty of guides on how to use it on the site, but be careful, it can make changes to your disk that make the problems worse! If you're unsure, read the documentation and seek advice in the forums.

Search Amazon.com for data recovery

Lulz Security on the NHS

Looks like the NHS is the next target?

More details here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13712377

Unable to send document as attachment from Office 2010

On a Windows 7 x64 machine with Office 2010 x64 installed, I had an issue with not being able to send documents via email.

After looking around for a while, I found this thread:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/outlook/thread/0aefa8d4-a5e5-4295-bea6-6bd48b6d80e6

The fix for me was to:

• Click Start
• Type Default Programs
• Click Set Your Default Programs
• Click Microsoft Outlook
• Click Set this program as default

I can now Save&Send documents as atrtachments.

Extra space on Dropbox for free

If you want cloud storage, then Dropbox will give you 2GB for free.
In fact, if you sign up using the below link, both me and you will get extra space.

http://db.tt/2RlbzsG

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

IOS update 4.3.3 allows more control of location tracking

I've blogged on this before, but a new update seems to allow control over how much location information your iPad or iPhone collects. Here's what I collected using iPhone Tracker before the update was installed:

All Time

21/04/2011

28/04/2011

05/05/2011

When I connected to iTunes today I was offered IOS update 4.3.3:

Quote:

IOs 4.3.3 Software Update

This update contains changes to the IOS crowd-sourced location database cache, including:

• Reduces the size of the cache
• No longer backs the cache up to iTunes
• Deletes the cache entirely when Location Services is turned off

I've not verified the last statement as I use the location services a lot, but iPhone tracker certainly can't see the locations in the iTunes backup now:

I'm also not sure if this is new. The Location Services option in Settings shows an arrow next to any application that has used location services in the last 24 hours:

Liberal democrats lose three seats in Felixstowe West

Nice result! I think one Liberal Democrat stood down, and the other two lost thier seats.
I would have preferred to have had a choice of candidates other than the the three major parties.
I'd be prepared to vote for an independent candidate or some of the minor parties...

http://www.suffolkcoastal.gov.uk/yourcouncil/elections/may2011/district/default.htm


FELIXSTOWE WEST (3 seats) - CON GAIN, LAB GAIN 2  Stephen Gerald BEEDLE - Conservative (546 votes)
 Stuart Michael BIRD - Conservative - ELECTED (590 votes)
* Henry James DANGERFIELD - Liberal Democrat (547 votes)
 Jeremy Robert MOORE - Conservative (503 votes)
 Margaret Anne MORRIS - Labour - ELECTED (574 votes)
John MULLEN - Labour (535 votes)
 * Michael Robert James NINNMEY - Liberal Democrat (479 votes)
 Michael John SHARMAN - Labour - ELECTED (590 votes)
Peter Robert WOODS - Liberal Democrat (454 votes)
 Turnout: 37.3%
 Electorate: 4,840

*Indicates defending councillers

All posts transferred from old Blog

I've now transferred all my posts (by hand!) from the old blog to this one.

Next steps are to transfer selective comments over and then create some permanent redirects from the old blog to here.

I guess I'll leave these redirects on for a few months before I then trash the old blog completely.

Blackberry Playbook - A pretty damming review

I'm not sure this review is completely fair, and I've yet to get my hands on a Playbook to see for myself. This guy sure didn't like it though:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobile-technology/rim-blackberry-playbook-unfinished-unusable-534

The requirement to have a Blackberry isn't going to be so bad if you already have one for work though? The Playbook just gives you an alternative presentation method for you existing data. I don't currently like duplicating my email accounts across all the devices I use anyway.

New battery charging technology

This new battery charging technology allows Lithium Ion batteries to charge in minutes, and Nickel Metal Hydride batteries to charge in seconds. It has far reaching implications! http://geekbeat.tv/two-minute-rechargeable-batteries/

Flipboard for iPad

I'm really loving this free App for the iPad - http://flipboard.com/.
It presents Facebook, Twitter and other stuff as a magazine feed which makes it so much easier to read. Also makes it very easy to get to the original story. Still hampered by the iPads lack of support for Flash when the obect is a Flash video or game though.

The title screen rotates photos from your feeds:

The contents page gives you a summary of your feeds and again rotates the stories:

Here's an example Facebook page:

Here's an example Twitter page:

Letter from Therese Coffey MP on Health and Social Care Bill

Dr Therese Coffey MP

Member of  Parliament for Suffolk Coastal

House of Commons

London

SW1A 0AA

020 7219 7164

therese.coffey.mp@parliament.uk

07 April  2011

Dr Mr Foley,

Thank you for contacting me regarding the Government's Health and Social Care Bill.

The Government's plans to modernise the NHS retain the underlying principle - to ensure everyone is provide with great healthcare, free at the point of use and based on need and not ability to pay.

However, when the NHS faces the twin pressures of an ageing population and of advances in medicine, we must always be looking to modernise and improve our NHS services, starting now.

Additional funding was put in over the last 13 years and at the last election, the Conservative Party was the only party to pledge real increases for the NHS budget each and every year of this Parliament - and we have kept that pledge.

Despite the years of extra funding, productivity in hospitals has declined by 15 per cent over the previous 10 years. Despite the best efforts of its staff, the NHS doesn't achieve the best outcomes. Someone in this country is twice as likely to die from a heart attack as someone in France, survival rates for cervical, colorectal and breast cancer are amongst the worst in the OECD and premature mortality rates from respiratory disease are worse than the EU average. Despite previous reforms, the number of managers in the NHS doubled under the previous Government and whole tiers of bureaucracy continue to restrict the decisions of doctors and nurses.

The new Health Bill will give responsibility for the majority of the NHS budget to frontline family doctors - instead of remote Primary Care Trusts - so that they can shape services according to the needs of the patients they see every day. This key change to the bottom-up, patient-centred approach in the NHS was in the Conservative Party manifesto and in the Coalition Agreement.

The changes we are making are clear:

• Shifting power and resources from the back-office to frontline staff and communities
• Devolving decision-making power from bureaucracy to doctors and nurses
• Giving patients more information and choice about where they are treated
• Introducing local accountability with a new powerful role for local Government

As a result of these modernisation plans, the NHS will be able to save £5 billion by reducing the unnecessary administration in the NHS over this Parliament. Because the Government is protecting the NHS budget, all of these savings will be reinvested where they should be - in treating patients.

We are making real progress:

• Since the General Election, there are 3,000 fewer managers (beginning to reverse the doubling in the number of managers under Labour) and 2,500 more doctors - and our new 'Health and Wellbeing Boards' to drive integration and democratic accountability in the NHS are being established in 90% of the country
• Groups of GPs from over 6,500 practices now cover 45 million people in our 'pathfinder consortia', taking the lead in improving local NHS services
• We are being more transparent about hospital performance: on things like hospital-acquired infections, and the number of times patients are placed in mixed-sex accommodation

But we also recognise there are some big questions about what we're doing. Patients and carers want to see how our changes will improve services for them. Doctors and nurses are asking about what are plans will mean for them. We hear that - and we want to continue to work with them.

Concern has been expressed on timing and suggestions are being made that GP commissioning is untested. This is not the case. GP commissioning already exists today and there are a large number of doctors across Suffolk who have formed consortia as Pathfinders. Learnings will be taken from them and used across Suffolk and the country to make the transition.

Now that the Health and Social Care Bill has successfully completed its Committee stage in the Commons, we're going to take the opportunity of a natural break in the legislative process to pause, listen reflect and improve. This is a genuine listening exercise: where there are good suggestions to improve the legislation and the implementation of our plans, changes will be made.

The Government is shortly launching a website - www.dh.gov.uk/healthandcare - which will allow everyone to have their say. A series of events will be staged to hear from the NHS directly and a team of frontline doctors and nurses are to be recruited to act as expert advisers - the NHS Future Panel - on our modernisation plans.

I can assure you that this is not about the NHS being privatised or other incredible suggestions. It is about having an NHS that truly puts the patient at its heart, has confidence in GPs making clinical decisions and together deciding how tratment can and should be made.

Yours sincerely,

T. Coffey

Free service to view\remote control - join.me

Very simple to use with Windows, Mac, Android and IOS support. Join.me allows you to share your screen with 1 or more people. No sign in or software installation required, though there are Apps for Android and IOS.

http://join.me

The presenter (on a Windows PC):

Joining (from an iPad):

In action on a PC:

In action on an iPad:

Problem When Maximising Chrome

Had an issue appear recently. When I maximised my Chrome browser, it was slightly wider than the screen. This meant that the wrench icon slightly moved off the screen, but more importantly, the right side vertical scroll bar was positioned off the screen. I could resize it manually, but this was just slightly inconvenient.

This is how it looked:

I am running the developer version so it may well be a bug introduced in this version (12.0.742.12 dev-m):

I discovered that removing the theme caused the browser to behave as expected:

Problems using iPad on Office 365 Beta

I had some problems connecting my trial iPad to the Office 365 beta. I put all my credentials in but the iPad kept prompting for a server. I entered the server name as used by the Outlook account, but this didn't seem to work. Seems that m.outlook.com has now worked fine.

Thanks to this post:
http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/148/t/301.aspx

TomTom Data used by Police to set Speed Traps

Another misuse of data gathered from members of the public. The reported case was in the Netherlands, but I wonder if the same case is true in the UK?

You can find a statement from TomTom here:
http://www.tomtom.com/page/facts

Physical vs Virtual Steelhead appliance from Riverbed

We're currently looking at WAN acceleration products, particularly virtualised ones.
Here's a video on the Steehead appliance from Riverbed:
http://blog.riverbed.com/2010/07/demo-video-how-fast-is-virtual-steelhead-compared-to-the-steelhead-appliance.html

iPhone or iPad Tracker

There has been a little bit of a storm recently about the iPhone\iPad tracking database that was recently discovered on the device, and on computers used to backup the device.

I've used an OSX App to take a look at the data on an iPad I'm evaluating.

I live in Felixstowe and commute to Huntingdon, with the odd bit of work in Peterborough and Cambridge.

This is the data collected around my commute:

Note the odd one near Norwich and the ones around the North East of London? Well, I haven't been there since I've had this device. Notice also that the points seems to cluster around larger towns - I've used Waze on this iPad while driving so I was a bit surprised that the dots didn't follow the route that I use, the A14.

Here's a zoomed in part around where I live. The dots appear to be in a regular grid with only one small dot on my house:

It seems that the iPad\iPhone is only storing an approximation of your devices location.

The App I used can be obtained here:
http://petewarden.github.com/iPhoneTracker/

They also have a nice FAQ:
http://petewarden.github.com/iPhoneTracker/#faq

Links to news stories here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/20/secret_iphone_location_tracking/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/22/apple_iphone_location_tracking_analysis/

Transfer of Blog progress...

Slow.

I'm having to move each post by hand, and after about 50 or so I get hit by Captcha word verifications:

This is slowing it down a little bit, so I'm about 100 out of 300 copied.

Dropbox have access to your encrypted files

Many, many, people use DropBox to share files between computers and each other.

I think you seriously have to question a service whom have access to the encryption keys of these files and can release them without the judgement of a court, indeed, even to protect thier own "property" rights.

Apparently this is a recent change, and you can read the DropBox privacy policy here.

Interesting article on passwords

http://redd.it/grfny - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:ASDA in Ipswich

Please standby...

Trying to transfer my posts from http://cs.thefoleyhouse.co.uk to here...

Convert Windows 7 from KMS to MAK License Keys

Installed some Windows 7 Professional VM's to find that they had defaulted to KMS licensing.

It was relatively easy to convert from KMS to MAK with the following command lines:

1. Install the product key (replace with your key):
   slmgr /ipk XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
2. Activate:
   slmgr /ato
3. Display license information:
   slmgr /dli

Thanks to this post for most of the help:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winserversetup/thread/1db5b305-510c-4800-ab1f-e0647cc8a877

FOG (Free Opensource Ghost) Multicast problem

I managed to get FOG up and running on everything bar multicast - I thought it might be something to do with VirtualBox until I dicovered a configuration gotcha.

If you set a MYSQL password, the installation instructions tell you to change the password in /var/www/fog/commons/config.php.

What I got was the following error message in /opt/fog/log/multicast.log:

Failed to connect to database, will try again in next iteration.

After trying mysql -u root -p to debug the password and altering the connection_timeout to 5000 as suggested elsewhere, I finally found the fix here:

http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/373

Turns out I had to edit the file here as well:

/opt/fog/service/etc/config.php

Having done this, I was able to run a multicast session great!

Ubuntu boot error in VirtualBox - piix4_smbus 0000.00.07.0: SMBus base address uninitialized - upgrade bios or use force_addr=0xaddr

Been having an annoyance with Ubuntu and other Linux distro's running in VirtualBox for while. It didn't seem to have an impact on functionality, but it possibly had an impact on speed of boot.

I managed to find the answer here:
http://finster.co.uk/2010/11/16/virtualbox-piix4_smbus-error/

Essentially, you do the following:

• Start a terminal 
• sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf 
• Add the line blacklist i2c_piix4 to the end of the file and save 
• sudo update-initramfs -u -k all 

You might want to optionally remove unneeded kernal images before updating the initramfs to cut down on how long that part takes.

Unable to add search provider to IE8

This has been bothering me for a while on my server, and only just had some time to do something about it.

 I found the answer here:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Search/thread?tid=4d9cc69c2ac5abd3&hl=en

The contents of the registry entry:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ TypeLib \ {EAB22AC0-30C1-11CF-A7EB-0000C05BAE0B} \ 1.1 \ 0 \ win32

Was set to:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\shdocvw.dll

Instead of:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\ieframe.dll

Windows Live Messenger 2011 - 0x80048820 Logon Failure

I don't use Windows Live Messenger much, but after the install of the recent IE9 RC, I noticed that the darn thing wouldn't sign in properly.

I did the usual Google-Fu and tried stuff ranging from deleting cached contacts folders, repairing the install, removing and reinstalling, checking IE proxy settings to re-registering various DLL's all without luck.

I then tried logging (under Options > Connection > Logging) and got the following:

1aec            Messenger:              Zone_Voice (voicevideoplatformlogon.cpp:66): ERROR: [OnLogonResult called with an failure hrLogon] "" failed with 0x80048820 in .
1aec            Messenger:         Zone_LogonState CUIManager::OnLogonResult hr=[0x80048820] m_dwUILogonFlags=[2]
1aec            Messenger:                 Zone_UI CUIManager::OnLogonResult@0270CEC8: enter
1aec            Messenger:         Zone_LogonState CSignInUIController::OnLogonError> hrError=[0x80048820]
1aec            Messenger:         Zone_LogonState CLogonErrorHandler::DisplayLogonErrorDialog> hrError=[0x80048820] s_fDisplayingLogonError=[0]

I did a bit of network tracing, and found that messenger was trying to use my work proxy. Strange for several reasons:

• I wasn't connected to my work VPN
• I didn't have any proxy settings in IE9
• Work blocks messenger, so it could never have worked like that

After a little more head scratching, I remembered using the "netsh winhttp" commands to set a proxy to try and fix some VPN proxy issues we had, and when I checked, I could still see the winhttp proxy settings set.

Entering the following command cleared the proxy, and allowed messenger to run:

• netsh winhttp reset proxy